I’ve seen people within the Harris campaign blame all sorts of things. “Identity politics” is broad enough that it can be almost anything. Republican and democratic are even identities these days.
Any idea where I can find any of those studies? That’d be an interesting read. It’s certainly not my experience when driving around the country, where outside of every city dems have almost vanished it seems. Perhaps policy is less important than Fox News messaging.
I dunno, I think Biden promised a lot he couldn’t deliver, things frankly outside of his power like codifying Roe, and it hurt us a little bit. But maybe I just prefer realistic, detail-oriented perspectives instead of hope. I want to know how a person is going to get the votes they need to pass legislation, how they are going to convince a Senator from a red state that drifted blue to support their policy, even when the whole gop propaganda machine attacks them for it.
I wish I remembered where those studies were, but the Bernie one was from a news poll or something during the 2016 primaries, and the rest from Harvard and the like were from even before then, IIRC. I do know there was an article making the rounds just the other day about a similar study to the Ivy League school ones about how the US can be considered an oligarchy, but I didn’t look at it.
As you say, policy is less important than what Fox News tells them. My grandfather and my first boss when I was in high school were both life-long Republicans who had the exact same answer when asked who they were voting for: they’d look at you like you asked them a stupid question and respond, “I’m a Republican. I vote for the nominee.” These are people who have had a strawman fed to them their entire lives of who “the enemy” is and vote entirely on that feeling and what the guy with an R next to their name tells them they should be opposed to. We have 70 years (and going) worth of Red Scare propaganda that lets them rile up the cult with scare words like socialism and communism. There was a great story from a few years back of a trans woman in New Hampshire who used that mindless voting block to her advantage to get elected county sheriff on a defund the police policy with one simple trick: nobody from the Republican party was running for the position, so she signed up as the Republican nominee and won in a landslide from all the people who didn’t bother to read up on the candidates and just showed up to vote for whoever had the R next to their name.
Speaking of policy, though, I think one of the big stumbling blocks we can add to the pile for why people don’t get out to vote and vote against their interests is how difficult it can be to access the info on who is running for what and what their policies are. Hence why people just listen to Fox News on who they should vote for. I can say from personal experience anecdotally from working with kids whose families were staunchly Republican during the 2016 primaries that they were shocked to hear what Bernie’s actual policies were and that they agreed with a number of them - like legalizing marijuana.
I’ve seen people within the Harris campaign blame all sorts of things. “Identity politics” is broad enough that it can be almost anything. Republican and democratic are even identities these days.
Any idea where I can find any of those studies? That’d be an interesting read. It’s certainly not my experience when driving around the country, where outside of every city dems have almost vanished it seems. Perhaps policy is less important than Fox News messaging.
I dunno, I think Biden promised a lot he couldn’t deliver, things frankly outside of his power like codifying Roe, and it hurt us a little bit. But maybe I just prefer realistic, detail-oriented perspectives instead of hope. I want to know how a person is going to get the votes they need to pass legislation, how they are going to convince a Senator from a red state that drifted blue to support their policy, even when the whole gop propaganda machine attacks them for it.
I wish I remembered where those studies were, but the Bernie one was from a news poll or something during the 2016 primaries, and the rest from Harvard and the like were from even before then, IIRC. I do know there was an article making the rounds just the other day about a similar study to the Ivy League school ones about how the US can be considered an oligarchy, but I didn’t look at it.
As you say, policy is less important than what Fox News tells them. My grandfather and my first boss when I was in high school were both life-long Republicans who had the exact same answer when asked who they were voting for: they’d look at you like you asked them a stupid question and respond, “I’m a Republican. I vote for the nominee.” These are people who have had a strawman fed to them their entire lives of who “the enemy” is and vote entirely on that feeling and what the guy with an R next to their name tells them they should be opposed to. We have 70 years (and going) worth of Red Scare propaganda that lets them rile up the cult with scare words like socialism and communism. There was a great story from a few years back of a trans woman in New Hampshire who used that mindless voting block to her advantage to get elected county sheriff on a defund the police policy with one simple trick: nobody from the Republican party was running for the position, so she signed up as the Republican nominee and won in a landslide from all the people who didn’t bother to read up on the candidates and just showed up to vote for whoever had the R next to their name.
Speaking of policy, though, I think one of the big stumbling blocks we can add to the pile for why people don’t get out to vote and vote against their interests is how difficult it can be to access the info on who is running for what and what their policies are. Hence why people just listen to Fox News on who they should vote for. I can say from personal experience anecdotally from working with kids whose families were staunchly Republican during the 2016 primaries that they were shocked to hear what Bernie’s actual policies were and that they agreed with a number of them - like legalizing marijuana.